Purple Moonlight Pages

There’s a moment about halfway through *Purple Moonlight Pages* where Rory Ferreira—the Maine-via-Chicago rapper formerly known as Milo—recounts sitting on the toilet at a gas station and reading a dialogue between two previous visitors, the first of whom wants to know the purpose of life, the second of whom answers, “To be the eyes, the ears and consciousness of the creator of the universe. You fool!” at which point Ferreira cracks up laughing. For the trainspotters, it’s a Kurt Vonnegut quote, but its function in Ferreira’s vision of the universe is clear: To those with eyes open, wonder can be found anywhere, from the grand peaks of art (“Leaving Hell”) to the routine of household chores (“Laundry”). If anything, Ferreira seems to set forth from the notion that such distinctions—between the grand and the modest, the exceptional and the everyday—aren’t as useful as we might think. As with his Milo projects, Ferreira’s grace is that for all his galaxy-brain tendencies, he always ends up coming off as a funny, grounded dude with more respect for the world outside his head than the one in it—at one point, he raps that he’d rather be trained as an electrician than get famous. The production—by the trio of Kenny Segal, Aaron Carmack, and Mike Parvizi—is just as inspired, zigzagging with the jazzy circuity of thought.

"His job is inventing trophies of experiences-- objects and gestures that fascinate and enthrall, not merely (as prescribed by older generations of artists) edify or entertain. His principal means of fascinating is to advance one step further in the dialectic of outrage. He seeks to make his work repulsive, obscure, inaccessible; in short, to give what is, or seems to be, not wanted. But however fierce may be the outrages the artist perpetrates upon his audience, his credentials and spiritual authority ultimately depend on the audience's sense (whether something known or inferred) of the outrages he commits upon himself. The exemplary modern artist is a broker in madness." - Susan Sontag. The Pornographic Imagination.

R.A.P. Ferreira (formerly milo) makes his most free-spirited project yet, rapping gleefully over lively and wayward production.